Mid-Continent Public Library Reviews

The director is one of the most milquetoast, ineffectual people I have ever encountered in a leadership position. Upper administration is painfully out of touch. It was a joke among coworkers that MCPL is "the Wal-Mart of libraries," because it feels more and more like a generic, soulless corporation every year. HQ has too many sacred cows to be truly innovative or effective. Cleaning out Youth Services was a good start, but how many years did that take? How drastically awful did it have to get before she finally "retired"? So many departments at HQ are a joke. They should act as support for branch staff to help them achieve their goals, not as arbiters of what can and cannot be done. They should not be there to keep taking meaningful work away. If you have an MLIS degree, working at MCPL is an insult. They'll help you pay for you to get your degree, but won't allocate funds to create professional positions at the branch level where they can be utilized and compensated more appropriately? Make it make sense. You can do better almost anywhere else in the area.

The system administration does not care about staff at all. They are most concerned with kowtowing to public opinion, even if that means making systemwide decisions that marginalize minority groups including the homeless and LGBTQ+ people. Any resistance from staff is met with a systemwide email from the CEO telling them essentially to sit down and shut up. Admin's response to COVID-19 did not take staff safety into consideration at all, leading to several branch closures within the first month of reopening, high turn over because of burn out, and a hiring freeze that left branches understaffed and vulnerable. The pay is much lower than what neighboring library systems offer and there is very little upward mobility.